The lost history of a sacred Scottish “healing island” has revealed its holy secrets in the skeletal dna of sick children, archaeologists in Edinburgh have announced. This string of majestical...
Archaeologists in Scotland are to bring alive “the human story” of the Glencoe massacre, one of the most violent episodes in British history. Three former settlements in the magnificent Glencoe...
Arguably the world’s most famous medieval manuscript, the wonderfully illustrated Book of Kells , was “created in 2 parts over 50 years,” Dr Bernard Meehan of Trinity College, Dublin, told reporters...
Golden rings discovered in a sea cave once adorned a dead child in a bizarre ancient funerary ritual, in Scotland. We might expect to read such a headline in a Peruvian or Chinese archaeological...
Gold was referred to by the Pre-Columbian ancient South American cultures as ‘Semen of the Sun’ and ‘Sweat of the Sun’ but in that continent, where it was so abundantly available, it held no...
Archaeologists claim that they have found a 'special site' – as they described it – for Bronze Age burials near Loch Ness, after the discovery of a second 4,000-year-old peculiar grave containing a...
Pictish carvings grace its walls; crucibles, a swan’s neck pin, and bronze arm rings were scattered across its floor – Sculptor’s Cave has had an exciting and varied history stretching back to the...
Vikings struck terror into the hearts of many in Europeans—and their reputation still lingers today when you ask a person to describe them. The answers given are that they were violent, hairy brutes...
Human remains discovered 138 years ago in Stirling, Scotland, have been identified as belonging to a Bronze Age farmer who worked the land more than four millennia ago. This makes the man officially...
Think of Scotland’s Highlands and islands and you probably think hills, glens, tartan, shortbread, bagpipes, caber-tossing, whisky, haggis, stags in the mist, grandiose aristocrats, bearded ghillies...
A woman thumps a knocking stone in the kitchen to prepare grain in preparation for tomorrow’s big meal. Her family have all gathered and are busy at various tasks about the house – her husband has...
One of the greatest mysteries of Scotland lies in the northeastern portion of the country. Though named for the Scots because the titular medieval clan won a decisive battle, much of Scotland's...
The purpose of these, predominantly Scottish in origin, spheres is unknown, although simple theories range from projectiles to predictive devices and more. But the sophistication of their design and...
“O nly in the period when Megalithic Man was setting out the sophisticated stone rings has a sufficiently high standard of mathematical knowledge and skill ever been reached before the fifteenth...
Archaeologists have recently uncovered the traces of a millennium old building at the location of the Pictish fort of Burghead in Moray, Scotland. The fort dates back to the time of Alfred the Great...
"Unless the fates be faulty grown And prophet’s voice be vain Where’er is found this sacred stone The Scottish race shall reign." -translated by Sir Walter Scott, 16th century A stone valued more for...
"Scotland's First Scientist", "The Lost Genius", "The Scottish Wizard", "The White Wizard", or "The Wizard of the North" are some of the terms used to describe Michael Scot. And although this...
The tale of the Rev. Robert Kirk and his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Faeries is very peculiar. When read carefully, the text of his 1691 manuscript describing the faeries of Aberfoyle,...
"At the beginning of the eighteenth century, to the inconvenience of both travellers and local people, there was no point at which the River Dulnain could be crossed when it was in spate, and burials...
Researchers have found 400-some lead slingshot balls at the site of a Roman siege in ancient Scotland and say the balls would have struck the natives with nearly the force of a .44 Magnum handgun—one...
It’s not that the Picts, a group of British Isle inhabitants, were that different from native Britons around the fourth century, a historian suggests in a new book. It’s just that Julius Caesar didn’...
Powerful wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers wielding supernatural staffs and spells have captivated our imaginations for thousands of years. Characters like Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore, and Yoda are...
In 1945, one of Britain’s social and intellectual elite, William Comyns Beaumont, a hyper-eccentric catastrophist published the most bizarre conspiracy theory of all time in which “Plato's legendary...
More than 400 years ago, the Macleod clan massacred about 400 of the Macdonalds on the Isle of Eigg in Scotland, when the Macleods smoked them to death in a cave in which they took refuge. Now a...